Stale Cheese

From MHWiki
Revision as of 12:18, 24 March 2009 by Rvanarsdale (talk | contribs) (added a link to the stats on stale rates)

Stale Cheese is the by-product of baited cheese going stale from a trap's cheese effect. Depending on the type of baited cheese, one of 3 types of stale cheese will be created. Only hunters with the title of Apprentice and above will be able to collect stale cheese.

Stale Cheese

Dried up morsels of cheese are often the result of traps made with harmful chemicals.

Standard Stale Cheese is created when most types of cheese becomes stale. They are listed as follows:

Usage: It is used in the crafting of Ancient and Runic cheese.

History and Trivia
For a short period of time it was dropped by Scavenger mice in the Catacombs.

Stale SUPER|brie+

The sight of this item often draws a tear or two from even the most steadfast MouseHunter. The magic of this item seems to be empowered by its almost paradoxical existence.

Stale SUPER|brie+ is created when cheese that have Magic Essence as one of the ingredients turns stale, with the exception of Ancient cheese. They are listed as follows:

Usage: There is currently no known use for Stale SUPER|brie+.

Radioactive Sludge

This toxic waste is the result of radioactive blue cheese turning stale.

Radioactive Sludge is created when Radioactive Blue cheese goes stale.

Usage: There is currently no known use for Radioactive Sludge.

Gathering Stale Cheese

Since stale cheese is used, particularly, in Ancient cheese, those hunters who climbed the ranks before it was preserved may find themselves needing more. In order for cheese to become stale, a few conditions are required:

  • The cheese must not attract a mouse (not catching is not enough - cheese stolen by a mouse, with or without red box, cannot become stale).
  • The trap's cheese effect must not preserve the cheese from staling

This suggests that to get stale cheese, one must use a cheese that does not attract very many mice with a trap with a stale cheese effect. The two stalest traps are the Obelisk of Incineration and the ACRONYM; the stalest base, meanwhile, is the Explosive Base. Either of the two setups suggested by this will give a cheese effect of "ultimately stale", which will make almost all cheese which does not attract a mouse become stale.

In order not to attract mice (and not waste gold on cheese that is made stale), many hunters use Cheddar or White Cheddar, the two cheapest cheeses. In most areas, these cheeses will still attract a mouse around half the time - which is clearly not ideal. As such, for "pure" stale farming, hunters often travel to areas like the Mousoleum and Acolyte Realm where few or no mice are drawn to standard cheeses. Of course, catching nothing at all for hours and days can be tedious. As such, it is also possible to use these cheeses (perhaps with a target or birthday base rather than the explosive, for better hunting efficiency) in an area such as the Meadow or Town of Digby, where any mouse that is attracted has a chance of being rare. Another option is to hunt in the Laboratory - thus collecting stale cheese while also having a possibility of collecting Radioactive Blue Cheese Curd Potions.

It should be noted that the highly stale traps all deal arcane damage, which most mice in the Furoma region resist. As such, though that region gives fairly nice numbers of points, it is not an efficient place to stale-hunt or semi-stale-hunt. Generally, in fact, any strategy that catches mice for any reason is not efficient stale-hunting (and is probably catching mice who give fewer points and gold than those that could be caught after stale-hunting), but many hunters may find it less annoying psychologically than those strategies which always miss mice.

See Also

  • Cheese – Required to create stale cheese.
  • Cheese Effect – Information on how cheese goes stale.

External links